


without her

by Junia



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst, F/M, POV Cardan Greenbriar, Post-Canon, also through letters......, cardan expresses his emotions through the weather, jude's not actually in it, not taryn friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 03:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18421884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junia/pseuds/Junia
Summary: Four times, Cardan has to deal with seeing Jude's twin sister. Four times it nearly kills him.





	without her

**Author's Note:**

> based on a prompt i got: Cardan being tortured by Taryn's presence because he misses Jude during her exile.

The palace is unbearably quiet without her. 

Maybe it is his heart talking, which apparently exists, after all. Because Jude was never the loud type of human. She was bossy, yes, and ruthless, and determined, but she also kept everything to herself; Jude slipped into the shadows with far too much ease. And yet, it feels infinitely more silent when Cardan returns from the beach. 

There is no one to boss him around anymore. No one to come to his rescue when he accidentally sets his room on fire. No one to love anymore. It is dead quiet in here and Cardan feels like it will swallow him whole. 

He is grateful when two sentries enter the throne room, claiming to be accompanied by Taryn Duarte by his own request. 

Right. He ordered Taryn here. He wanted to share the information personally. 

Taryn looks at him with her doe eyes, obviously clueless as to why she's here, so he tells her. Cardan recounts everything from Jude's duel with Balekin to her punishment on the beach in a flat voice, and when he is done he sucks in a deep breath and looks at her sister. 

Cardan expected anger, grief, any sort of emotion, but he didn't expect Taryn to blink and say, "Oh. Alright." 

"Alright?" he repeats incredulously. 

"I understand why you had to make this choice," she says. "Thank you for sparing her life." 

For a few minutes, it is dead silent again. 

Finally, he asks, "Is that all you have to say? Nothing more?" 

"That's all." 

Cardan sends her away without another word.

 

* * *

 

 

“I suggest celebrating summer solstice outside this year. The weather is perfect.”

“Perfect? Permanent rain showers and storms are good conditions to have outside festivities in your opinion, Locke?”

“Why, I assumed you loved water with you being the daughter of the sea and all?”

“And when I wish to be wet, I visit my home, and not stand around in the gardens, letting the wind ruin my hair.”

“Nevertheless, summer solstice is to be celebrated outside. Last year Eldred made it impossible because of his fading grip on the lands. This year…”

“This year our new king is throwing a temper tantrum.”

“Cardan, care to add something to the conversation?”

“Cardan!”

Cardan blinks open his eyes and shoots a lazy glance towards Locke and Nicasia, trying to cover up the fact he was half asleep seconds ago. “Pardon me?”

Nicasia huffs out a breath and throws her hands in the air. “This is what I’m talking about. Is this the way a king behaves?”

“The king behaves however he pleases,” he mutters back.

“No, I'm serious, Cardan. Enough with the sulking. The folk need a proper summer solstice after everything that happened this year.”

Cardan’s chest rumbles with the effort not to snap back at Nicasia, hurt her in the same way she had hurt him so many times, and after all, she is no innocent in all of this, since —

No. He won’t go there. Not again.

Nicasia is right. The disturbing and irritating feelings inside him are to blame for the weather outside. Cardan hates it. He hates how easily his emotions transform into cyclones and never-ending cloudbursts. He hates that he has yet to master his new abilities. Most of all, he hates himself for feeling at all since that is the reason he is stuck here, to begin with.

“Fine,” he says eventually and conjures up a hollow grin, “have your festivities. All I wanted was to water our crops.”

“You are most gracious, our king,” Locke replies with a leer and a mocking bow.

Cardan ignores him, instead wondering if he should bother making promises at all. As long as this sickness inside him continues to grow deeper, become stronger and manifest in the land around him, his words might as well have no meaning. And all he technically needs is to be in good spirits again. He needs something to put his mind to. But these days it is hard to find something worth being happy about it.

Nicasia is still glaring at him suspiciously when a fourth person joins the room, and his blood runs cold. All thoughts about improving his mood are forgotten.

“Here you are,” Taryn Duarte says and greets Locke with a chaste peck on the lips.

“Here I am,” Locke repeats, minimal surprise in his voice. “What brings you to the palace, dear wife?”

Cardan turns away as this — _this girl_ starts going on about her day. Trying his best to blank out her voice, her face, her general presence in the room, he pours himself a goblet of wine and takes his time drinking it.

Something in him twists at the fact that Taryn simply allows herself to waltz in his court and act like it’s her god given right. She talks like any of the people here are interested in her story, when in reality, Cardan doubts even her husband is.

Taryn does not belong here. Not after allying with Madoc and deceiving Cardan into giving up his entire army. Not after her countless deceptions. If anyone belongs here, it is her sister. But Jude is not here.

The reminder tastes like a knife in his guts.

Jude will not be here for a while.

With an emptiness to his chest, Cardan gets up from his throne and leaves the room without saying anything.

Outside somewhere, he hears thunder booming across the sky.

 

* * *

 

Three days later summer solstice arrives and the weather is good. The sun is out, warm and gentle on the skin as it should be during summer, and there is not a whiff of storm or rain in the air.

Cardan did his best. He stayed clear of people that bothered him — so nearly everyone, kept himself occupied with gallons of wine, and he wrote, a lot.

So the festivities are held outside. Nicasia is happy, and thus her mother, and thus Elfhame’s alliance with her. Locke is being his usual self: boisterous and irritating. The folk is drinking, eating and dancing under the open sky as the sun slowly makes its way down. All is well, except for one pesky, little thing again.

_Taryn._

When Cardan holds a short and casual speech, Taryn is next to Locke, her hands around his arm.

When the servants start offering bites of food on silver trays, she sits next to Locke on the grass and whispers something in his ear.

When they all stand in a circle and engage in light conversation, Taryn is there, again, linked with her husband, smiling as if it this is how it should be.

At one point Cardan gives up on trying to ignore the waves of cold rage flaring in his blood. He leaves his friends, catches a goblet of wine from a tray, downs it in a single gulp, and finds himself another one.

There is just something very tantalizing about Taryn Duarte’s presence.

The way she acts so innocently. The way she pretends her marriage with Locke is more than something practical and efficient. The way she looks.

By his father, sometimes Cardan catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eyes and his heart nearly stops in his chest because for one hopeful, foolish moment, he believes it to be Jude. And every time a series of questions and thoughts plague him. A lot of _what if_ s and _imagine_ s. And for that one moment, he allows himself to wonder what Jude is doing right now, how much she must hate him, or what she would do if she ever saw him again, what she would say. Or what it would be like if it was the two of them here, arm in arm. Every time the realization that he is being foolish and absurd hits harder than before.

This happens every. time. Taryn. shows. her face.

So it is not so much about how much Cardan despises and pities Taryn — although that part plays an enormous role as well — but rather how much he hates himself when he sees her.

“Careful, my king, I sense some rather strong breezes in the air,” someone says behind him and Cardan’s back tenses, for it is Locke who is probably finding amusement in his despair yet again.

“Leave me be and the winds will calm again,” Cardan cannot help but snap, barely containing a hateful glare.

Locke remains unbothered, an idle smile on his face as he observes him. “You seem annoyed.”

“And you bored, Locke. Leave me out of it.”

“You see, I noticed something in the past months.”

“I am shocked,” Cardan mutters, snatching a bottle from the servant boy this time.

“Which is,” Locke continues, “that every time my beloved wives comes along, you suddenly grow even more irritated than usual.”

Cardan gives him a shrug. “Perhaps you have already forgotten about the incident where _your beloved wife_ played a significant role in deceiving me.”

“Of course, there is that. However, I have a different theory.”

“You are welcome to keep it to yourself,” Cardan says and buries himself in his wine.

Locke lets him have a few gulps before he focuses his entire attention on Cardan, excitement and mischief written on his features, and says, “Is it perhaps somehow connected to Taryn’s twin sister? The one that you banished to mortal side?”

Cardan does not look at him. He says nothing.

“Was Jude perhaps more than your seneschal?”

Silence.

“I’ve always meant to ask you about that one time you kissed —”

A bright and sudden bolt of light flashes across the sky, the air growing thick and heavy with mist and dampness. Both of them look up in time for the world to release a boisterous thunder. It starts raining. The tulip that was tucked into Locke’s vest withers into a shriveled, ugly thing.

“Party is over,” Cardan says.

 

* * *

 

 

So Elfhame is drenched in rain and storms yet again. Although Nicasia complains about her ruined hair for days after, Cardan manages to calm down the weather again with time. And his mood.

He thinks that maybe this time it will last. After all, he cannot be this ruined by something he chose to do forever, right? However, that is when Taryn decides to show up in the throne room.

At first, the familiar heart-shaped face and shade of brown hair give him a heart attack. Then Cardan recovers and the tight feeling in the pit of his stomach is replaced with immediate irritation.

“What do you want?” he asks after Taryn curtsies.

“I’m in need of a favor, my King.”

“No.” It shoots out of him faster than any thought of diplomacy or fairness, and Taryn’s round eyes widen in surprise.

“But —” She struggles for words. “But you are _the King_. You are supposed to hear me out.”

“As the High King, I am also free to do the exact opposite,” he tells her.

Then, as if he has forgotten, Taryn says, “You’re Locke’s friend.”

_Barely so._

“You and my sister were —”

“Do not,” he says, voice pitching dangerously low, “talk about Jude.”

Her brows tug into a tight scowl. The expression is so painfully familiar, and yet so unlike on this completely different person, that Cardan has to tear his eyes away, focus them on something that does not look like the person he imagines to be standing next to him every day.

“Why not? You exiled her, not me.”

 _Do not take the bai_ t, his inner voice says. The voice that looks and sounds like the girl standing in front of him. The inner voice that has guided him the months Jude was trapped beneath the waves, and finally from the day on since her banishment. _Kings are not easily provoked._

“My sister would have wanted you to help me,” Taryn says, in all seriousness, and all restrains snap.

 _I’m sorry, dear_ , Cardan says to his inner voice before seizing Taryn with the most odious look he manages. “Are we talking about the same sister you lied to and betrayed twice? The sister that Locked amused herself with while you stood around and did nothing? The sister you used to deceive me?”

He takes some satisfaction in the way Taryn’s cheeks flood with shame, but then she says, “You are no better. You betrayed her just as well.”

“I —” _sent Jude away because this place was nothing but cruel to her. I sent her away because here evil queens can take and trap her under the sea for months, evil sisters can treat her like garbage even after everything she has done for them, and evil princes can make her crawl on her knees and humiliate herself. I banished Jude because I knew she would die here eventually, and as much as I hate myself for keeping her away, I would hate myself much more for doing nothing as she ruins herself trying to keep up with the folk around here. I did it for her own good._

The words are there, swallowed up by his own shame, his own fears and guilt and hatred.

What he says instead is, “The difference between us is that I know I am monster, while you pretend to be a saint.”

 

* * *

 

Hours later, when most of the land goes to sleep, Cardan sits at his desk in his chamber, holding an ink pen with golden carvings in his hand. And just like every night, he starts writing:

_Dear Jude,_

_today I saw your sister. I hate her. I hate her for what she did to you all these times. I hate that she did not show an ounce of emotion when she heard about your banishment. I hate how much she reminds me of you, even if your face is infinitely lovelier, sharper, and more alive._

_Every day the urge to send the Roach to the mortal world gets stronger. However, I must resist to indulge myself in such cravings, because if ever do, I might as well turn up at your doorstep myself. And neither of us wants to know what would follow after._

_Every day I tell myself why I chose to banish you. I repeat it like a mantra in my head. And if I’m being honest it’s your voice that I hear. It is your voice that tells me that it was the most logical choice, the best choice for_ you _. Even if you hate me now, more than before, at least, you are safe. At least, you remain human. You might have not noticed, Jude, but the longer you spent in this court, the more detached you grew to your human heart._

_I tell myself every day and yet it never gets easier. And yet I still look for you in everyone I see here._

_I wish it was really you here, not just your voice in my head, but for now it has to suffice._

_Love,_

_your Cardan_

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a rush, and I kinda hate it, but whatever. I miss Cardan and Jude, and they continue to ruin my life on a daily basis. Please feel free to leave me your thoughts!!


End file.
